Standing closer to the RINO can be dangerous

There’s a sad story making the rounds telling about a woman on a safari in Africa who wanted to get a picture of herself in the same frame as some rhinoceroses:

The Beeld newspaper reported Tuesday that Chantal Beyer said the game park owner snapped pictures and suggested that she “stand just a little bit closer” seconds before the attack. Photos show Beyer and her husband only feet away from two rhinos.

The paper said that just after the photo was snapped, the rhino attacked, and its horn penetrated Beyers’ chest from behind, resulting in a collapsed lung and broken ribs, the paper said.

The AP story shows up in paper after paper with a headline that says something along the lines of “‘Stand closer to the rhino’ results in grave wounds.”

Because I view everything through a political filter, every time I see that heading, my brain converts it to “Stand closer to the RINO results in grave wounds.” As far as I’m concerned, that’s just as accurate a headline as the original. RINOs are neither fish nor fowl (although they are pretty foul). They’re Democrat Lites whose overriding principle isn’t small government but is, instead, making friends in D.C. and avoiding nasty headlines from the media.

Do I believe in compromise? Yes, absolutely — but only when there is a good faith effort to compromise and when there is common ground. What today’s RINOs refuse to acknowledge is that the old rules governing compromise in Washington worked because RINOs viewed conservativism as a checkbook thing: they weren’t wedded to small government, they were wedded to affordable government. If they kept a moderate hand on the checkbook, they were doing their job.

Now that federal spending has climbed to monstrous and destructive proportions, there is no way Republicans can fulfill their traditional “moderate” role of being a check on overspending. That horse has long left the barn. The only thing left for ostensibly Republican politicians to decide is whether America will be a soft socialist (drifting inevitably into hard socialist) country or a true capitalist country. The American body politic is staring at a fork in the road with no middle ground. Politicians have to go in one direction or another. Those who choose the Democrat direction cannot call themselves Republicans. They’re just Democrat stragglers, and they may as well acknowledge that fact.

In today’s political world, RINOs are a dreadful thing for true conservatives, because they give credibility to the Democrat drift to socialism. They lend a superficial gloss of bipartisanship to outcomes that have nothing bipartisan about them. They are enablers and they are dangerous.

Republican politicians ought to fix their sights on one bright star: smaller government. With that as their starting point, they can have coherent, credible positions on myriad issues that concern the American people — everything from budgets, to abortion, to gun control, to immigration. Negotiations and possible compromise can flow from this ideologically sound starting point. Oh! And true conservatives really need to stay away from those dangerous RINOs.

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Sadly, Americans want a large government. They just don’t want to pay for it. So, making small government your guiding light is a sure-fire way to lose. Perhaps an alternative might be to make leaving the best possible world for our children our singular focus. Maybe Americans are too far gone even to rally around that (although the liberals sure have used it effectively when it suited their purposes). But maybe there are enough Americans out there who care enough about our children and the future of our nation that advocates for those children and that future can gain enough support to make a difference.

By the way, as many of you know I’ve now moved to The Villages, Florida. When I first visited here 5 years ago there were many buffalo on Villages property. The founder loved them. But, sure enough, a woman walked right past a warning sign to get her picture taken with a buffalo. Not surprisingly, she was injured as well, and now the buffalo are gone, grazing privately on a farm miles from here.

Zhombre

You’re in The Villages? Welcome to Florida! There’s no state income tax and the large bugs are called palmetto. There are pythons in the Everglades and often in double wide trailers too from which the ones in the Glades are believed to have originated. Let me know if you get to Tampa.

Thanks, Zhombre. I got here in September, in time to be greeted by the love bugs. Felt like turning around & helding back to California. Those things are a pain. Have taken up golf and it’s fun watching the gators sun themselves in the water hazards. Definitely not in California any more.

Sadly, 49 of those RINOs voted with the Dems to send a pork-laden “Hurricane Sandy Relief” bill of $50+ Billion to the Senate.

WTF is wrong with Boehner and the chairs of the relevant committees? The GOP owns the House, and they could have passed a “clean” relief bill if they’d wanted to.

Throw the Rascals OUT!!

Wolf Howling

Leaving aside for the moment the political implications of Rinos – this story reflects, the bambiazation of society, where wild animals are seen through a Disney-esque lens rather than respected as “wild” animals who might have missed seeing “The Lion King.”

As to Florida and animal pics, on a personal note, I have a picture of me at 4 years old sitting on the back of a 15 foot gator sunning himself at one of the gator farms that dot the state. Apparently, the handler told my parents that gators don’t eat out of water and are safe when sunning themselves – right before he put me on the back of the gator. I still look back at that picture in amazement, both for the insanity of allowing it (I think my parents were hoping for a late term, 15th trimester abortion) and how, assuming the handler was right, that litigation in the U.S. would prevent any gator farm from even thinking of allowing that to happen today. It’s a different world.

People are under the impression that the Republican party doesn’t have a whole list of things that they can be blackmailed over, even if said blackmail material would never be something that Democrats would worry over much about (given media supremacy).

This is a minor misleading comprehension of the working reality in DC.

The Left has proven that no matter what Americans want, enough propaganda and power will make people obey. In that light, I’m not too worried about listening to people who think the definition of victory is defeating the Left in the political arena, no matter what methods they prefer.

When people think “victory” comes from winning an election against the Left, it’s a laughable analysis of the current war situation.